All Forum Posts by: Mitch Dowler

I have real estate in my SDIRA. By all means all SDIRA conducted business must be in the name of and under TID of the SDIRA LLC. Don't let your personal name get attached except as the manage of the LLC. I had no problems doing this and utilities set up with businesses all the time. My SDIRA is a checkbook control type IRA so doing things in the name of the SDIRA custodian does not apply when you have a checkbook controlled SDIRA LLC.

I have used Steve Bighaus for three deals and working on a fourth. Can't tell you if he does hard money stuff but for mortgage he got them done without a hitch for me.

Hello Chance,

Best wishes at building your empire! I am retired Army so I get where you are coming from. I want to be able to manage my investments from anywhere in the world. I enjoy travel a lot and have family in Korea and throughout the states. I also love to go back to Europe whenever I can.

I still work full time as a regional manager for a telecom company (was Signal Corps in the Army). Because I am busy I buy turnkey investments with a strong positive cash flow. The two I have locally in the Washington State JBLM area I manage myself but the rest for Indiana, Texas, Missouri and Tennessee I use local property managers and just manage the managers.

I use Quickbooks for my accounting and each property has it's own class to track income and expenses. The properties in each local area are held in an LLC set up in the state they are located in. I purchased a Quickbooks template from Landlord Accounting and have used it and the great instructions provided for many years.

http://landlordaccounting.com/

For the registered agents I pay up for three years at a time to get a discount and use Harbor Compliance.

https://www.harborcompliance.com/

I use Cozy for marketing, tenant applications, screening and to receive ACH rent payments direct to my business checking accounts.

https://cozy.co/for-landlords/tenant-screening/

If you manage your own rentals locally look for a good rental housing association that provides education in local landlord tenant law and forms that are prepared by a real estate attorney and updated regularly to comply with changes in law.

http://www.rhawa.org/

Also for marketing I use Zillow Rental Manager (formerly Postlets) to create effective ads that get posted to several sites and to create professional Craigslist ads.

https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/posts/#/all/

I use Movoto to check up on the local schools and demographics of out of state properties I evaluate for purchase. Demographics can make or break your investment. Know that areas with a high number of single parent households and unusually high concentration of minority populations can be challenging and the areas do not appreciate well.

http://www.movoto.com/demographics/

I use this property analysis tool on my iPhone 6+ to track my properties but did not care for their accounting software when I tried it years ago. It may have improved since then.

http://www.propertyevaluator.com/

I use Neat Desk to scan all receipts and it can also be an effective accounting tool and could replace Quickbooks but is not as feature rich. I keep digital copies of all documents and receipts and shred all the paper. Back up, back up, back up.

http://www.neat.com/

Hope this helps!

Thanks to everyone for their input. Some investors have good experiences with Section 8 it just didn't work for me the two times I tried it with this property in St Louis and another property in Dallas. I think Section 8 better fits a C Class property so that less damage can occur.

I have investments in the St Louis market but live in Washington State. Good to know of an attorney there if I have a need!

Casey go to movoto and pull the demographics and school information for that area. Also pull the information for the areas you already invest in and are comfortable with. Compare the two and look at the similarities or differences.

Is there a healthy mixture of majority and minority people living in the area?

How do the schools rate?

Is there an excessive number of single parent homes?

How are the crime rates?

What type of jobs do people work, look for clues at how much of the population is dependent on public assistance.

www.movoto.com

I started doing this when I purchase properties and find it is very accurate at predicting the desirability of the neighborhood and the quality of tenants that will want to live in your property.

Put a band-aid on your bleeding heart and go with the most highly qualified tenant. This will protection your accusations of discrimination as well. I would call the lesser qualified tenant and tell her that you had received the other very strong application first and see if she still wants to risk her cash in the screening process.

I often may receive several applications in a day and run the screening that evening. I will always select the most highly qualified tenant that meets my written screening criteria.

It is BS. Provide your own estimated lower financials back to the seller along with your lower offer price and let the seller know you would be happy to review any real documentation they can provide.

I agree with Mike but my though also is that it is generally a bad idea to lose a garage in favor of living space. Better to build on than to lose the man-cave.

I have a Section 8 tenant in St Louis who has been in my property for two years. She was well below market rent at $925 per month for this 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with a full basement and garage. I had the property management Realtor pull comps and I decided I would renew at $975 which is still $50 below market rent and on top of that I pay the sewer bill which is unusual for the area outside of Section 8.

This tenant has been very needy to deal with and frequently breaks things such as the kitchen sink rinse hose and storm door causing costly repairs. She also tried to charge me to clean her carpet she stored in the unfinished basement that got wet when they had floods and unusually heavy rains and small amount of water seeped in.

Section 8 managed by the St Louis Housing Authority has been late with rent two times at about two weeks late each and SLHA refuses to pay the late fees per the lease. I have always had any repairs made ASAP and maintain my property in a high state of police.

The SLHA delayed and delayed on the lease renewal now at the last moment of the last possible day they want to renew again at the $925. For me this tenant is costly and not worth my time to renew at $50 to $100 below market plus the additional $40 per month I pay for sewer so I am saying not no, but hell no to SLHA.

What would you do renew or take the 30 day vacancy in exchange for hopefully better tenant closer to market rent?